PESTLES MADE OF STONE. 



87 



Fig. 22. 



Si 



were used in connection with cylindrical stones which were usually worked 

 into their present shapes with great care, and many of them are ornamented 

 at the upper end. These implements are known universally as 

 Pestles, or the pounding stones by which the material, whether 

 intended for food or for pigment, is reduced to meal or pow- 

 der, as the case may be. They are common, not only to 

 the locality where the carefully wrought mortars occur, but 

 throughout all North America. Those from the Pacific coast 

 show, in many cases, the same care in their manufacture that 

 characterizes the mortars ; but, as a class, they are not so read- 

 ily distinguished from the examples found along the eastern 

 coast as are the associated mortars. 



While great length, uniform and regular shaping through- 

 out, whether truly cylindrical or tapering, are features at once 

 noticeable of very many, these highly finished examples pre- 

 sent but little variation. There is seldom a trace of orna- 

 mentation proper; the pointed or rounded heads, as they may 

 be called, with their projecting collars, being evidently more 

 for use than for ornament One marked exception has, how- 

 ever, been noticed by Mr. Henshaw on a pestle obtained at La 

 Patera, which is about the size and shape of the one represented 

 by Fig. 25. Lines crossing each other have been cut over its 

 surface, and, although now nearly worn away, they are in 

 places sufficiently distinct to show that a rude ornamentation, 

 similar to that on many other articles here described, formerly 

 existed. 



Fig. 22 represents a carefully wrought example of these 

 pestles of about the maximum size. It is made of a moderately 

 dense, dark-colored sandstone ; is comparatively smooth, but 

 still retains the slight depressions or hammer marks made in stone pestle, ±. 

 shaping the specimen. It is 24.5 inches in length, and 9.2 inches in circum- 

 ference at the lower or rounded end. At a distance of two inches from 

 the end by which the pestle was held by the hands, there is a double 

 collar, or ring, with a shallow circumferential depression one-half of an 



